Directors – Albert & Herbart Leung – 2024 – Hong Kong – Cert. 15 – 114m
****
20 years after a stuntman on his team was hospitalisedwhen a stunt went wrong, an action choreographer takes on his first stunt job since the tragic incident – plays in Competition at the 2024 London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs from Wednesday, October 23rd to Sunday, November 3rd
This opens with a terrific cops and robbers fight in a shopping mall at the top of an escalator bearing remarkable resemblance to (and just as exciting as) the one towards the end of Police Story (Jackie Chan, 1985). However, while this might be an obvious homage to that film specifically and 1980s Hong Kong action cinema generally, it’s far from a mere attempt to retread the same ground: we suddenly cut from the cops and robbers scenario to reveal a film crew of that period shooting an action movie.
There is a particularly dangerous stunt coming up. A (stunt)man must jump off a bridge onto a lorry as it passes below, with a car immediately behind. (Again, this is remarkably similar to the stunt in Police Story II (Jackie Chan, 1988) where Chan leaps off a balcony onto a lorry passing in the street.) In the current film, for the stunt to come off, the stuntman must jump at exactly the moment the action choreographer Sam Lee (Lam Yiu Sing from The Goldfinger, Felix Chong, 2023; Where the Wind Blows, Philip Yung, 2022; Memories to Choke on, Drinks to Wash Them Down, Leung Ming Kai, Kate Reilly, 2019; Dream Home, Cheung Pang-ho, 2010) tells him; to wait until he can see the truck would be too late and cause considerable, possibly fatal, injury. It’s all about trust. The stuntman in question, Wai, is fairly inexperienced, so a more seasoned colleague Kam (Terry Zou) steps in to show him how it’s done. There’s really nothing to worry about.
Alas, at the moment the Kam is to jump, a walkie-talkie malfunctions and the instruction is briefly delayed, meaning that the stuntman jumps ever so slightly too late, meaning that his body bounces off the back of the lorry and hits the car behind. (This is Hong Kong. So, yes, you see this stunt, as it goes wrong, on the screen.) He survives, but is seriously hospitalised. All this has further parallels to Jackie Chan and Police Story, specifically a stunt in which a double-decker bus brakes too hard and two stuntman fly out the upper front window land on the hard road rather than on the stationary car positioned to cushion their impact. And Chan, who did his own stunts and ran his own team of highly competent stuntmen, did, on occasion, injure himself during shooting. As did many, less high-profile, Hong Kong stuntmen.
Although these particular stunts evoke Jackie Chan, the film is more an homage to 1980s Hong Kong action filmmaking generally, and the pressures and conditions under which stuntmen worked. In the story, action director Sam Lee, who has a reputation for pushing and pushing until he gets what he wants in a shot, on this occasion resulting in a stuntman’s injury, is forced to retire and twenty years later (now played by Stephen Tung from Hard Boiled, John Woo, 1992; Enter The Dragon, Robert Clouse, 1973) is working as a medical practitioner.
Sam’s time in the stunt business has taken a toll on his family life, in particular his inability on one occasion to go with his wife (Rachel Leung from In Broad Daylight, Lawrence Kwan Chun Kan, 2023; A Light Never Goes Out, Anastasia Tsang, 2022; Raging Fire, Benny Chan, 2021) to an important medical appointment with their young daughter because he was looking after an injured member of his own stunt team elsewhere in the hospital.
Twenty years later, he must earn back the trust of his daughter (played as an adult by Cecilia Choi from Twilight of the Warriors: Walled in, Soi Cheang, 2023; Beyond the Dream, Kiwi Chow, 2021; A Light Never Goes Out; Detention, John Hsu, 2019) who is about to get married. Alas, this coincides with Sam’s first offer of film work in 20 years, from an old colleague, the director Cho (Yen To) who is making his final film and wants it to compare with the action movies of days 20 years ago. Today’s action choreographers, obsessed with safety and not taking too many risks, won’t cut it; he wants Sam. The picture’s star is Wai (Philip Ng), who owes Sam one for looking after him in his early stuntman career.
So Sam makes various commitments to his long-suffering daughter and then screws them up, repeating his past mistakes. This coincides with the rise of aspiring stuntman Lee “Long” Sai-long (Terrance Lau from Twilight of the Warriors: Walled in; Beyond the Dream), who Sam takes on as his action choreographer. Long, in turn, faces pressure from his older brother Kit (Max Cheung), who doesn’t want to see his kid brother involved in the dangerous movie stunt business. Long, however, helps Sam by offering sage advice about winning back Cherry’s affection and respect for her challenging father. At one point, Sam meets up with Kam (Keith Ng), in a wheelchair since the accident, to be given a piece of her mind by Kam’s wife Kuen (Stephanie Che).
For the finale, Sam seeks personal atonement by doing a dangerous stunt himself, when it’s scheduled to be done by Long, which involves jumping off an exploding, six-storey building – unaware that Cherry, who has never watched her father’s films, is on the set, watching.
Surprisingly, perhaps, for a film which moves between action cinema, filmmaking drama and a drama about the conflict between family and professional commitments, the film is consistently watchable and engaging with a clutch of memorable performances. It successfully embodies the contradiction that Hong Kong action movies of the 1980s pushed the craft of the stuntman further, yet today’s equivalents are safer to work on for all concerned. (Curiously, recent Jackie Chan vehicle Ride On, Larry Yang, 2023, about stunt horseriding, explored similar tensions between 1980s and present day Hong Kong action filmmaking).
It’s not the place to come if what you’re after is an all-out, Hong Kong action stuntfest – although its handful of stunt scenes are outstanding – but in terms of exploring the considerable pressures placed upon those who worked in the Hong Kong stunt industry in its heyday, it completely hits the spot.
Stuntman plays in Competition at the 2024 London East Asia Film Festival (LEAFF) which runs from Wednesday, October 23rd to Sunday, November 3rd. It was out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, October 11th.
Trailer: